Africa-Press – Tanzania. TRAFFIC Police Commander SACP Wilbroad Mutafungwa has directed all school bus owners in the country to take their vehicles for inspection and be provided with certified inspection reports in order to be allowed to continue with the service.
Mr Mutafungwa issued the directives at Mnazi Mmoja grounds in Dar es Salaam on Friday where the inspection exercise is ongoing.
Some of the inspected areas are road worthiness of respective buses, safety belts and sponge seats for conformability of the passengers.
“Today we have already inspected about 100 school buses in the Dar es Salaam region. The exercise is going on countrywide until next month before schools open.
Thereafter it will be against the law for any person to operate buses without certified inspection report,” Mr Mtafungwa warned.
He stressed that during inspection focus is placed on checking the quality of the car body, tires, steering systems, brakes, seats as well as other car systems before taking decisive action.
Commander Mutashingwa said that the driver’s license must be appropriate with the car he is driving. “The driver must have a grade C license obtained from the National Transport College (NIT) or VETA,” he said.
The inspection exercise which goes hand in hand with offering road safety education is taking place at Temeke police station in Dar es Salaam region and at main police stations in other parts of the country. The inspection comes barely a few days after accident involving a school bus killed 13 people, 11 of them being primary school pupils.
Statistics released by police showed that in the month of June this year 17 percent of inspected cars were found with mild faults while 6.6 percent had severe ones, leading to being banned from operating.
“About 359 school buses out of 2,090 had minor defects while 137 were found to have major ones and were banned from operating,” reads the report released by the traffic police department.
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